How I Work with the Olympic Spirits

After years of working on and off with the Olympic Spirits and studying the first book that speaks about them--The Arbatel--I've adopted a more contemplative approach. This shift was bolstered to a large degree by further study into Neoplatonic philosophy and magic. I'd like to give a shout out to Jason Youngman, the voice behind the YouTube channel Metaphysical Reflections for his mentorship and engagement in Dialect in that regard.

I also happen to be 3 days away from completing another month-long working with the Olympic Spirits that was originally supposed to be a group project that reenacted the group project described in my book The Seal of Secrets of the World. After having been invited to facilitate the new project, I quickly found myself in a situation in which the other female participants in the group only communicated through the male group leader and in which the group leader and one sole other active participant in the group freaked themselves out and discontinued before 10 days of the month-long working had elapsed. They ironically immediately went on to form their own goetia-based enclaves about Olympic Magic.

In any case, the dream-work portion of the Working, which was supposed to be the main activity of the group work, was, for me, filled with pleasant imagery into which relevant metaphors could be read. Because group members insisted on doing standard evocation work as well, I did so, too. Rather than being entertained by profuse visionary content, as was the experience years ago, I had more of an integrative experience in which I rested in the grandeur of the energy signature of the Olympic Spirit evoked. A powerful, comforting, and empowering experience, and seemingly in accord with the aims of Ficino, Diacetto, and other medieval Neoplatonic mages who regarded the planetary intelligences as steps to spiritual refinement and ascendancy in a path of return toward The One.

All about the Magical Wand on YouTube

All about the Magical Wand: the quintessential tool of magicians, fairies, witches, and all manner of other magical folk. Here is a quick video on the history and lore of the magical wand. A more in depth free pdf booklet is available through my website www.sorcerersandmagi.com where you can sign up for other free pdf downloads on magic, mysticism, and spirituality and check out my fiction inspired by authentic magic and mysticism. 

Upcoming free pdf downloads:

• The Arbatel, Olympic Spirits and the Seal of Secrets of the World
• Meditation and Its Effects 
• The Stele of Jeu (Bornless Ritual) and the Divine Light
• On Vedanta

All About the Magical Wand History and Lore Free PDF download

The wand is the quintessential mythical tool of magic. No magical fantasy character is without one. Wands make things happen and make nifty weapons, don’t they? Perhaps because, in real magic, the wand is a symbol of the magician’s will and acts as a symbolic tool of concentration and direction of energy.

The wand is associated with space, mind, healing, communication, and the element of fire. In its fiery aspect, it represents the male and solar regenerative power—a phallic, fertile symbol.

The celebrated early 20^th century mage Aleister Crowley referred to the wand as a symbol of the magician’s oath. What was the oath but commitment to attaining “True Will.” True Will was Crowley’s term for spiritual liberation and enlightenment.  Crowley says in his book Liber IV:

 “The Magick Wand is thus the principal weapon of the Magus; and the ‘name’ of that wand is the Magical Oath.”

The wand is a symbol of the magical worker’s power to act. It is a symbol of the magician himself. As the 16^th century mage Giordano Bruno said in De Magia:

“[In the highest sense] a magician is a wise man who knows how to act.”

In other words, a magician, ideally, is a person who has gained self-mastery.

Well, that sounds kind of egg-heady and a far cry from the swish-and-flick romance we love about the magical wand. But maybe the explanation takes the strangeness—the scary foreignness—out of the picture about what a “magical wand” really is. And maybe it makes it okay for you to have one not only as a kitschy novelty item or children’s toy but as a powerful symbol of spiritual goals and intentions.

 Where did the idea of the magical wand originate anyway? Learn more from this free, illustrated pdf booklet.

Learn about how real magic in history inspired myth and fantasy.

Sample from All About the Magical Wand

Sample from All About the Magical Wand

Sample from All About the Magical Wand

About La Maga A Story about Sorcerers and Magi

"What is it like to wake up from the idea of yourself?"  That is a question discovered by characters in the fantasy fiction novel La Maga A Story about Sorcerers and Magi. I got the idea that I should illustrate the novel. I like to say that is it sort of like Harry Potter for grown-ups but is especially for grownups who like classic children's literature and also have an authentic interest in magic and mysticism. 

The main character is a magical woman named Sofia La Maga.  After many  years in political exile Sofia returns to her homeland and becomes a professor at her alma mater The H. Trismegistus mystical arts academy.







Even though the governor of her homeland doesn’t much like her, Sofia befriends and mentors his juvenile delinquent son, Leonard de Lux, Junior.  The only thing Leonard is good at—or think he’s good at—is playing the Phaeton Maneuver—a  very dangerous, outlawed game that magical teenage boys secretly  play in the  where all these magical people live.

When Leonard’s father finds out that Sofia has not only  gotten Leonard on the straight and narrow but has given him the experience of enlightenment, he is not  sure whether he should be happy about it. After all, Sofia is an anti-establishment political dissident and a person from a much lower caste of society than he is. But he is impressed with her, and like young Leonard, he falls in love with her.  Like Leonard, he undergoes a profound spiritual transformation that will, in turn, profoundly shapes destiny.

 –Dionesia Rapposelli

Kindle edition

Paperback Night Horse Press

                                                     

The Olympic Spirits of the Arbatel Part 5 Phaleg

Phaleg (Mars)
[The third type of wisdom] is in corporeal creatures. –from Aphorism 9


Phaleg is the Olympic Spirit associated with Mars and the Roman god of the same name. The Arbatel calls Phaleg the Prince of Peace and the Intelligence ruling martial affairs.

The name Phaleg may be derived from Peleg, the name of a minor character in the Old Testament who is said to be an ancestor of Abraham. Peleg means split or divide. This suggests that Phaleg energy is related to the sphere of duality, including distinctions, conflicts, and reconciliations between self and other. The sigil itself may represent a horned animal in the way of a hunter’s arrow.

Phaleg is said to rule 35 Provinces. This translates into the equation 7 x 5, making its value 5. Its geometric form is the pentahedron.

It is represented in a diagram described in the Arbatel called the Seal of Secrets of the world as lines that divide the Seal into quadrants

That Phaleg is called the Prince of Peace may be a reference to the Pythagorean Tetractys, a triangle made of 10 points, in which the second tier of the triangle, composed of 2 points, represents strife and the third tier, composed of 3 points, the harmony or balance between opposing forces. Peace in the sphere of the martial is in diplomacy and so, rather than violent conquest or rash action, Phaleg may be more associated with focus, diplomacy, and strategy in achieving one’s goals in face of the conflicting goals of others. In this sense, the Roman deity Minerva the goddess of wisdom in Warcraft , strategy, and diplomacy also may be a suitable godform for this Olympic Spirit.

On the Olympic Spirits Part Four Och

Och is the Olympic Spirit associated with the Sun and Roman gods associated with the sun such as Sol, Hesperus, and Apollo, The name Och may refer to the. Greek word ochros, meaning pale yellow. Or perhaps the Latin root for the number 8, oct, suggesting pervasiveness in filling the 8 directions of space.

Och is said to rule 28 Provinces. This translates into the equation 7 x 4, making its value 4. Its geometric form is the tetrahedron. Using simple gematria, if we take the number 28 and turn it into the equation 2 + 8 we get the number 10, which  reduces to 1, alluding to the Tetraktys and ideas about the Empedoclean dimensionless point.

 It is represented in a diagram described in the Arbatel called the Seal of Secrets of the world as larger circle in the Seal of Secrets within which the mansions of the moon are plotted

Och is said to have 36,536 legions; that is, 365 and 36. The number 365 refers to the solar year. The number 36, according to Plutarch (circa 46-120), represents the Tetractys and also with the World because it represents Totality. He arrives at this rationale by pythagorically adding together the first four odd and even numbers: 1+3+5+7+2+4+6+8=36.

Och is said to “to give 600 years.” 600 years suggests the hexagram –or double tetrahedron--representing the celestial sphere. Thus, achieving Och consciousness makes one master of the celestial sphere.

Aurelio Zosimo--The Crazy Professor

The Crazy Professor was a strange, spaced-out sorcerer who looked like he belonged in a rock band. He taught philosophy at the Bythos Academy. He was heavily involved in charitable work for Deeples and also “Deevees,” the utter dregs of magical society, lower than folk practitioners. Leonard’s father thought The Crazy Professor was a terrorist. It did not surprise him in the least that, within weeks of the H. Trismegistus parent-alumni reception, Professor La Maga was seen cavorting with The Crazy Professor. His name was Aurelio Zosimo. 

From La Maga A Story About Sorcerers and Magi

Aurelio Zosimo was a 44-year-old, wry, impish, and obscure-witted academic of early Greek philosophy and medieval Hermeticism. He had been a child prodigy. The prodigious-ness set the stage for him to become, at the mere age of 32 years, the Marsillio Ficino Scholar Emeritus at the Bythos Academy of Magical Sciences.

Zosimo had a plaque on his office door. On it was inscribed a motto adopted by Commons enthusiasts of his brand of sorcery. The plaque read Nothing is true; everything is permitted.

Popular lore had it that the 11^th century ascetic Islamic fundamentalist Hassan ibn Sabbah—a mystic and mastermind of an assassin squad—had said it right before he bit the dust at age 90 years, but the saying was actually penned and launched as legend by the 20^th century Commons beat poet and career drug-addict William S. Burroughs, in whom a romanticist fascination with Sabbah developed. Outer Plane Discordians and Chaos mages had cheekily spun lore about Sabbah and his alleged pronouncement into cult fiction, conspiracy, legend, and disinformation.

Those of small mind and little vision regarded the saying as an anarchist war cry. To them, the saying was tinged with hedonism of a kind more crass than the generally misconstrued motto expectorated by the notorious Victorian-era sorcerer-mage Aleister Crowley: “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.” However, in modern parlance among those who adopted the motto Nothing is true; everything is permitted, it was simply an affirmation that all belief was provisional, not absolute. Because belief shaped perception, which modified behavior which modified circumstance, perhaps circumstance could be modified if belief that modified perception and behavior was deliberately fabricated rather than imposed as unquestioned convention. 

From The Savior at the End of Time

The Seal of Secrets of the World: A Cube of Space Hidden in the Arbatel Soror ZSD23 on YouTube

My presentation on the Arbatel and the Seal of Secrets delivered at  the annual Philosophers Forum in New Haven, Connecticut,  Metaphysics in Art, Architecture, Poetry, and Science April 26 to 27, 2014

The Savior at the End of Time 3rd in the Sorcerers and Magi Series now Available in Kindle format

Chaos Magic meets Jesus Christ Superstar. The Savior at the End of Time, the third book in the Sorcerers and Magi series, will be available in Kindle format on July 4, 2013.

The tale is a veiled take on the Christ-story in which the unassuming and disheveled but oddly charismatic iconoclast, Professor Aurelio Zosimo, introduced in book one, is haplessly rendered into a new messiah for the Lions of Light agenda and the “Immanentization of the Eschaton.” The novel references the post-modern magical counterculture current of Chaos Magic. In this installment of the series, Leo de Lux and Sofia La Maga are at odds about their designs regarding Aurelio Zosimo. Both find themselves in over their heads as plot line of the series progresses toward an apocalyptic showdown and the revelation of portentous secrets.

The Sorcerers and Magi series offers thought-provoking ideas about finding oneself and one’s true purpose in the context of mystical magical fantasy and will be interest to adult fiction readers drawn to magia, mysticism, and spiritual philosophy. Book 1 in the series, La Maga A Story about Sorcerers andMagi, introduces us to the Inner Plane and its fragmented society of sorcerers, magi, and folk practitioners. There, the binding quality of love, transforms a father and son, shifts a paradigm, and gives a jump start to a utopian movement The Lions of Light. Magical fantasy is deftly woven with Eastern mysticism. In Book 2, The Sex Lives of Sorcerers, a hapless fairy incarnates as a woman in the world of “Commons” in the Outer Plane. Sorcerers from the Inner Plane swoop in to vie for her affections in the interests of love and occult power and opportunism. . As savior, a redeemer, and a siren, the story’s heroine circumspectly aids the Lions of Light and sets the stage for radical and illuminating transformations of all who come into contact with her. References to alchemy, medieval occultism, steganography, and sex magic permeate the text.

All About the Magical Wand: the quintessential tool of magicians, fairies, witches, and all manner of other magical folk

 Free illustrated pdf booklet History & insight on the
magical wand and inspiration for making your own

Why is the magical wand the quintessential tool of magicians, fairies, witches, and all manner of other magical folk? Why and how would you make a wand of your own? Find out. 

The wand is the quintessential tool associated with the magical worker or occultist. It also is an important ritual tool in Western magic and mysticism. Not Harry Potter swish-n-flick (even though that is great too!). But real magic by real people in real history. --History that belongs to you and me!

My willow wand

Unlike the sword or dagger, which are aggressive magical weapons that cut through space and are traditionally used in banishing operations, the wand is used to command and move energy. As a ritual tool the wand represents the magical will and qualities such as command, heroism, determination, and efficiency.

The famed Victorian-era mage Aleister Crowley has said:

 “The Magick Wand is thus the principal weapon of the Magus; and the ‘name’ of that wand is the Magical Oath.”

A Little History

Just as dinosaurs are thought to have shrunk into birds and small reptiles over the course of evolution, the wand may be a mini-version of the staff or scepter. The staff or scepter is a stylized version of weapons such as the club and pike. The person who held the staff or scepter in ancient communities was the one who held the power.[1]

The wand or staff also may be related to mysticism related to snakes. 

The snake may have been equated with the magical staff and used in fake "miracle working" feats by ancient spiritual teachers.[1] When a snake handler presses on a snake’s head in a certain way, the snake is temporarily paralyzed  so that it takes the form of a staff or a pole. When the “staff” is flung onto the ground, the snake  revives and appears to be a snake again. Such an event is described in the Book of Exodus (7:8-13):

Yahweh said to Moses and Aaron, “If Pharaoh says to you, ‘Produce some marvel,’ you must say to Aaron, ‘Take your staff and throw it down in front of Pharaoh and let it turn into a serpent. To Pharaoh Moses and Aaron went and did as Yahweh commanded. Aaron threw down his staff in front of Pharaoh and the court, and it turned into a serpent.  Then the Pharaoh called for his sages and sorcerers and with their witchcraft, the magicians of Egypt did the same. Each threw his staff down and these turned into serpents. But Aaron’s staff swallowed up the staffs of the magicians.”

Aaron was Moses’ brother and apparently held political or magical power because Moses often is depicted telling him to use his staff to make magical catastrophic events occur. As in stories in the New Testament, the magical actions of the protagonists aren’t considered to be “magic” but acts of God, whereas the exact same actions performed by the enemy/rivals/nonbelievers are labeled “witchcraft.”

A similar scenario occurs in the New Testament Book of Acts in which stories of confrontations between Peter and magoi (mages), are related.[1-4 Like the story of Aaron and the Pharaoh’s wizards, the magic performed by Peter is considered to be a miraculous sign of God, but the magic of Simon and other magi are painted as misguided and diabolical.

Fresco of Jesus raising Lazarus from Dead

And so some controversy exists about whether early Christians thought of Christ as a kind of magician. A third-century fresco discovered in the catacombs of the St. Callisto Chapel in Rome shows Jesus holding a wand in his right hand while raising Lazarus from the dead. In another example from that era, a gold glass plate from the Fourth Century, now housed in the Vatican Library, shows Jesus using a magic wand to raise Lazarus from the dead. In a series of images on Christian sarcophagi dated to the 4th and 5th century, Jesus is depicted using a wand to resurrect Lazarus, turn water to wine, multiply loaves and fish, and heal the widow’s son.[1-4]

The staff/wand also may have had its origins in the staff of Asclepius, Greek god of healing  It is a single serpent encircling a cypress branch—a reference to a certain benign, tree-climbing snake that was common in the Mediterranean.

 The staff represents the power of knowledge and healing and came to be confused with the caduceus of Hermes. Rather than the art of medicine, the caduceus of Hermes represents the balance and union of opposing or complementary forces and the self- mastery that is achieved by the person who can unite opposites.

Witchy Wands

Circe by John William Waterhouse

The first literary reference to a wand, which appears in the Odyssey, does not associate it with male power or sorcery. The wand is wielded by a woman--the sorceress Circe.

 Circe was associated with the goddesses Diana and Hecate, which in turn were later associated with the Fate (pronounced like fa-tay)—Italian fairies.

Italian fairytales were the first place that fairies appear in literature.[5] They are depicted holding wands, equating them with the sorceress Circe. They were the counterpart to more threatening ideas of female power, which also were related to Diana and Hecate--the mythical witch.

 The fairies depicted in Italian fairy lore were different from those in Northern European tradition. Italian fairies were full-sized, elegant, goddess-like women who  protected and performed favors for those mortals  they took a liking to.[5]

They evolved from the idea of the Fates (Roman/latin, Parcae; Greek, Moirae; Teutonic, Norns), who spun, wove, and cut the thread of life. 

Whereas the wand of the male magician or mystic represented masculine will, leadership, and potency, that of the female magician represented the power to weave and ensnare. Rather than a scepter or weapon, the wand of the witch or fairy may have derived from the distaff--a antique tool used to spin thread.

The flipside of the wand-wielding fairy is the mythological witch. Rather than a wand, the witch was depicted with a bifurcated branch—that is, a bune wand, which is a rough distaff—or else a broom.  

 Brooms were not only a kind of wand used for symbolic space clearing but also magical objects for fertility. Jumping the broom, thus, was—and continues to be—part of the marriage rite within folk culture. There is also evidence that brooms handles were used in provocative ways for trippy shamanic adventures involving flying ointment [6]. . . .

 Learn more . . . .

Free pdf download

Selected references

1. Joe Lantiere. The Magician’s Wand Parts 1-4. http://secretartjournal.com/author/joe/
2. Michael D. Bailey. Magic and Superstition in Europe A Concise History from Antiquity to the Present. NY: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. 2007.
3. Lee M. Jefferson. The Staff of Jesus in Early Christian Art. Religion and the Arts. 2010;14:221-25.
4. William Storage and Laura Maish. Christ the Magician. A survey of ancient Christian sarcophagus imagery. http://www.rome101.com/Topics/Christian/Magician/
5. Raffaella Benvenuto. Italian Fairies Fate, Folletti, and Other Creatures of Legend. Journal of Mythic Arts. 2006. http://www.endicott-studio.com/articleslist/italian-fairiesfate-folletti-and-other-creatures-of-legendby-raffaela-benvenuto.html
6. John Mann. Murder, Magic, and Medicine. New York: Oxford University Press. 2000.

Excerpt from Chapter  VI The Pyr Sacra Empowerment  in La Maga A Story about Sorcerers and Magi

 

Leonard knew nothing was askew in the house—only he was, but as he had told his father, whatever it was, it wasn’t “bad.”

 He found Victor. He was the head of his father’s personal cadre of staff-bearers—his bodyguards. He lived with a wife and a pack of boxers on the property in a nice-sized stone cottage apart from the nestling of cottages in which the household help lived. He was a husky man with a strong but calming demeanor who approached his role as a chief attendant to the Consul with unwavering and ungrudging solemnity and faithfulness. Leonard found him at home, where he was propped on a sofa, watching a movie, and savoring pretzels and oatmeal stout while his wife was gardening in the moonlight.

He and Leonard and the canine guard skulked around. The dogs sniffed here and there, but neither the dogs nor that staff-bearer were willing to descend into the dungeon of de Lux senior’s tower.

 It was gloomy, with a single low-volt lighting fixture with which to illumine the shelves housing artifacts, worts, potions and props, organic materials, and metal plates and parchments of wicked sigils and defensive glyphs. The room had a well and a pit with a flue that took fumes of burned things through a tunnel in the ground to the outside away from the house. Nothing unusual seemed to be there.

 In the ground floor studio, Leonard found the big staff. His father didn’t tote it around in the way too many magical persons did their own staffs. The man could summon it through the ethers and into his grip on demand. The talent was fast becoming a lost art, primarily because persons weren’t as martial these days as in the past. (Schools didn’t allocate much time to perfecting the practice, and instead of staffs, more and more younger persons were carrying wands, which were more easily concealed and portable.)

Wands and staffs typically had a wood core, generally oak, yew, holly, ash, rowan, cherry, or willow. They all had specific magical properties. Oak was commanding; yew bridged the here and hereafter; holly drew on the energies of the element of fire as ash did those of water; rowan was mercurial, cherry good for love magic, and willow for moon magic and healing.

The wood would be sheathed in a full coat or lattice of metals: iron, silver, platinum, gold, copper, bronze, nickel, etc. and studded with special stones. The staff that Leonard’s father had asked him to retrieve was made of oak and hawthorn sheathed in a serpentine design of iron and tin, spotted with chips of black and red stones. An onyx finial of the sea-goat Capricornus—the zodiacal sign under which Leo de Lux had been born—was mounted on a jewel-crusted girdle of platinum on the top of the staff.

Oak for majesty, hawthorn for the power of lightning, onyx for smiting magical attacks, and the metals of Mars and Jupiter. Capricorn: the sea-goat; the southern gate of the sun; the Babylonian Ea, god of wisdom; Grecian Aegipan, restorer of Zeus’ might in defeating the Titans; saturnine, mercurial, and spanning the heights to the depths. This staff was a martial and lethal weapon but not because it made a good cudgel.

Victor jumped back when Leonard grasped the staff. The dogs barked and whimpered.

 “What are you going to do with that, Lenny?” the man nervously asked.

 “My dad told me to get it,” Leonard replied, “to protect myself, I think.”

 “Watch where you point it, son,” Victor cautioned. “Are you in some kind of trouble?”

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The Dragon Dieth Not Unless It Be Killed by Brother and Sister at Once

Excerpt from Chapter 6 [The Lovers] The Sun and the Moon in  by The Fallen Fairy 

The “Law of Karma” posited three lines of force: sanchita karma, prarabdha karma, and agami karma. Sanchita karma was the momentum that had originated in some mysterious and distant past. It had built up over eons like a snowflake becomes an avalanche as it accumulates compacted snow, ice, rocks, twigs, shrubs, small animals, then big ones, all kinds of crap in the path of its ferocious trajectory. Wherever the exponentially building mass was as it fell was the present. That was prarabdha karma—fate, destiny—where the past caught up with a person, dictated the present, and set the direction for the future.

Then there was agami karma, which was where the avalanche might be headed and how its structure might change because of it. It was the potential future, predicated on both where it had been (sanchita karma) and where it was (prarabdha karma). Even though the residual effects of the past were relentlessly barreling from the present to the future, the present still could modify the future’s course.

Bellaluna Drago was a fallen fairy because having had the ill-fortune of becoming some sinister Renaissance necromancer’s pet (and Michael knew who that fiendish bastard now was), she had haplessly done something despicable that led to the necromancer’s and her own ruin. She was now clawing through lives and worlds in atonement. Her redemption had come. Michael felt privileged to play a role in it.

“There is a saying in the alchemical texts that goes like this,” Michael murmured. “The dragon only dies when he is killed by his brother and sister at once; not by one alone, but by both at once. That is, by the sun and moon.’ You and me,” he said.

“We’re compelled to create stories for the whys and wherefores of things in an attempt to trump a wild card, which is existence itself. And existence happens despite us and also is a product of our own making. It’s a bit of a paradox,” Michael continued. “You dream of being attacked by a man who would pull you down to Hell with him. This is all the fluff of the mind—a subterfuge for some other vexation that is limiting you. But even that is a mere projection of mental noise. We torture ourselves with it for no good reason.”

Michael told Bella this to console her, even though it was and wasn’t what was going on. Nevertheless, he continued.

“In creation mythology, we talk about the world forming from chaos and void by the will of a conscious entity—God. But the chaos—the so-called prima materia—is not matter, nature, or the world; it is the human psyche full of convoluted impressions, habituations, and the conditioning of nature and nurture. This is the seven-headed dragon that must be slain by the hero who is none other than the divine spirit within asserting itself. It rescues the damsel, which is the soul.”

The path of inner alchemy and of mysticism in all the great traditions founded in gnosis, Michael contended, was to transform the human creature, who was nothing more than a helpless gear of the world machine, into a real person with real will, intention, and creative abilities.

“Some persons call this enlightenment; some call it ‘being like unto God’; some call it the Great Work, which is magic,” he said.

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The Pyr Sacra Empowerment, Holy Fire, and Kundalini-Shaktipat Experience

In the Sorcerer’s and Magi mystical fantasy fiction series, the Pyr Sacra is an important empowerment that is transferred between high-ranking sorcerers and magi and their would-be apprentices. The Pyr Sacra, which is garbled Latin for “Holy Fire,” is depicted as a profound transformation of consciousness that results in a certain level of “enlightenment.”

Energy of the Depths  16 x 32 inch digital
image by Dee Rapposelli
 http://www.deerapposelli.com

Many people in the West now look to Eastern paradigms and jargon to explain enlightenment experiences and dabble in practices to achieve these experiences. The terms shaktipat and Kundalini are bandied about. People receive shaktipat—a transformational empowerment—from spiritual adepts—and engage in yogic practices to “awaken” Kundalini.  These esoteric Eastern ideas filtered into Western consciousness during the New Thought movement and occult revival that occurred at the turn of the 20^th century. They especially gained notoriety during the 60s counterculture era.  Now, the web and bookshelves are overflowing with rhetoric about them. As it happens, Soror ZSD23 herself spent several years—more than a decade, in fact—engaged in study of literature (scriptural, academic, and “pop”) and yogic practice related to the Kundalini phenomenon.

In her view, shaktipat and the so-called Kundalini experience is a sudden reformatting of consciousness; indeed, a reformatting of neurochemical pathways that, ideally, undo the conditioned robot that you became shortly after you popped out of your mother’s uterus. The experience is described in this way in the Kashmir Shaivite classic the Spanda Karikas:

He sees the totality of objects appearing and disappearing in the ether of his consciousness like a series of reflections in a mirror. Instantly, all of his thought-constructs are split asunder by the recognition, after a thousand lives, of his true, essential nature, surpassing common experience and full of unprecedented bliss. He is struck with awe, with mouth agape. As he experiences vast expansion, his proper, essential nature suddenly manifests.

            --translation adapted from Jaideva Singh. Spanda-Karikas The Divine Pulsation. New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. 1980. 

It is a profound paradigm shift that can be caused, not only as a result of dogged spiritual practice but a wide variety of means, including person-to-person transmission.  Variants of shaktipat/Kundalini awakening exist in many other esoteric cultures and are explained using different names and descriptors. In classical Greek mysticism, it may have been referred to as the speirema (“serpent power,” which is what Kundalini [literally, “she who is coiled”] is said to mean). In medieval Western Hermetic esotericism, it was dubbed Holy Fire. In more pedestrian ecstatic forms of Christianity, it called the Holy Spirit. And these examples are just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

In the extreme, the shaktipat/Holy Fire experience is a full-blown transformation. Otherwise, many people involved in spiritual practices experience self-limited enlightenment experiences. Rather than reinvent the wheel, I will quote myself from an article published in the January 2001 issue of Yoga International magazine:

In the kundalini-rising episode, the pathways become clear; a subjective sensation of heat and energy ascending through the body often occurs and culminates in an exalted meditative experience. It is typically self-limited—the energy seems to filter back down and you go back to ordinary life.  After each episode, however, you may be left with the impression that a change has taken place or some insight or initiation has spontaneously arisen. More interesting, the quality of life and encounters in the days, weeks, and even months following more intensive episodes may be marked by a peculiar graciousness. This suggests that the kundalini-rising experience itself, though coveted, is not the end-goal of the process but its epiphenomenon. It is the effect of a quantum leap in mind and body that can occur again and again and evolve in quality.

            --Excerpt  from Kundalini Rising by Dee Rapposelli. Yoga International. January 2001:70-75.

What might a shaktipat-Holy Fire experience feel like?  In Chapter VI of La Maga A Story About Sorcerers and Magi, Leonard de Lux Junior  has the life-changing experience:

Excerpt from Chapter VI The Pyr Sacra Empowerment

He was pretty sure that Professor La Maga had forgotten about him. He was poised to conclude that she was jerking him off with her glamour—the girly cuteness, the familiarity, the sappy, stumbling false vulnerability. It was a complex ruse to undo Leonard and his father. Leonard had fallen into the trap. Stupidity.

He was in the kind of mood in which a person questions why he was born and whether staying alive was worth it. He pricked his finger on a splinter of wood gouged from the floor. He wanted to feel the sting and watch a bead of blood well up.

A black hole, a dark night. Leonard felt a tingly sensation fizzle over the left side of his body that became especially strong when it reached his cheek and then his ear. A heat, as if he had taken a shot of hard liquor and ignited his insides swelled in his stomach and leeched up.

This heat and a tingling pressure pent up at his neck. It forced Leonard’s spine to elongate as if he were a marionette tugged on a string. As the sensation burst into his head, he was enveloped in a scintillating flood of light, fluttering, and profound depth. Thunder roared inside his ears like the sound of a furious tide. His heart beat hard, and his breath rhythmically billowed in a way beyond conscious control.

Arrested in terror and elation, his eyes fluttered and teared to the vision of vast light and stroboscopic effects. He uttered an amazed sound as if gazing upon something magnificent—an entity of breathtaking beauty and hospitality, a communication of utter reassurance. He could neither see nor hear it, but he witnessed it nonetheless.

Everything about his life and circumstances—and everything about everyone else’s life—suddenly seemed incidental and pathetic. Reality, on the other hand, seemed to be pure happiness, and it was in his grip.

The seizure subsided. The thunder resolved into sheer calm and the strobing into radiance. The episode was probably much briefer than it seemed. It left Leonard refreshed and full of breath like he might have been at the moment he was born.

The room seemed illuminated. Leonard himself seemed illuminated. He could only laugh however disoriented, because it was as if he didn’t know himself. He pressed his thumbnails into his fingertips and examined his hands. They seemed to be glowing. He had to find a mirror and look into it. He hardly recognized himself.

His eyes ran with tears. Tears of laughter, tears of awe. It seemed all the same, and then of gratitude when he pulled together enough to realize what had happened.

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